Rogers has bolstered its presence in Atlantic Canada with the acquisition of Internetworking Atlantic Inc. (IAI), including the company’s Halifax-based data centre.
The national communications company is already well-established in some parts of the east coast – New Brunswick and Newfoundland – but integrating IAI will help grow the company’s footprint in Nova Scotia, said Ken Marshall, Rogers Communications’ vice-president of enterprise sales in the Atlantic region. “We’re obviously looking to grow in the east coast.”
He said Rogers is particularly focused on the enterprise space, including business and the public sector. “Government is certainly a large player on the east coast.”
The acquisition gives the company its first data centre in the region, for a total of 16 across the country, which allows Rogers to address data residency and redundancy requirements of customers, said Marshall. “There’s a lot of customers that are small, medium or large who want a data centre that is local. It gets us into the data centre business in Atlantic Canada.”
Buying IAI comes on the heels of having a working relationship with the company already; Rogers and IAI have some of the same customers, and IAI was also a Rogers customer for some services. Marshall said the team of 25 people at IAI is a good culture fit for Rogers and fits with the types of services the company wants to offer. In addition to the data centre, which offers colocation and storage to regional customers, IAI offers virtual and hosted services that run over IAI’s Internet and fibre network which extends into New Brunswick, as well as professional services.
Marshall said it is important to be able to offer local services to customers, while at the same time, IAI’s portfolio allows Rogers to be a truly national player. It already has strong relationships in New Brunswick where it offers fibre and telecom services, he noted, and has a done a lot of work with the federal government in the region on the wireless front.
Marshall said Rogers continues to evaluate “build versus buy” options when it comes to growing its business; the acquisition of IAI made sense from both an asset and cultural fit.
“They don’t come along every day,” he said. “This one was a very good fit.”
Rogers is not the only company expanding in the Atlantic Canada region. Last month, CentriLogic bought Advanced Knowledge Networks, a nationwide provider of managed IT infrastructure including hosting, cloud, and private Wide Area Network services. The acquisition grows CentriLogic’s business in Halifax, as well as Calgary and Vancouver. It opened in a new data centre in Mississauga in August.
